


Rising to the Challenge

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Exos, F/M, Hunter Vanguard, Warlock Vanguard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 05:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6362143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ll take him” She said.<br/>Kamon and Delah, Day 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rising to the Challenge

**Author's Note:**

> 52 Stories for 52 Weeks prompt that I never really kept up with. I did four, it is now March.  
> [Find it here on Tumblr](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/137450577493/rising-to-the-challenge)
> 
> I chose to post this next due to a kind word on the last one of them, thank you nice friend, here is what little more I have of these two.

She turned up her nose and looked him up and down without moving her head, as if appraising a floor lamp

“Yeah I’ll take him.” Delah said, with a bored clack of her jaw. Ikora gave her a look. She could feel it. Didn’t mean she had to care.

“Aight soldier boy, beginners get to take a grand adventure to the Cosmodrome. Need anything in particular…” She ventured to the rest of the room, scanning the Vanguard for cues.

“Just beacons Guardian.” Cayde said, unfolding and gently shaking out yet another map. It was a dismissal. She took it.

“Let’s get going then, come on Kamon.”

“Please don’t.” Was the immediate, slightly pained response to her wordplay. Her lights laughed but he was behind her and couldn’t see them. She turned her head slightly to nod him on, and more importantly to show off her emotions. Wore them on her sleeve, Ikora said. She would have loved to take it more literally.

Kamon huffed, it was a blip in his light. His throat bulbs barely flickered. He was quite the opposite from her.

She was glad to be a Warlock, not everyone was as expressive as her. It meant she could feel emotion in the Light, could sense the affect she had on others.

She was certainly the one in charge between the two of them, she could feel it. She smiled and led him proudly into the plaza.

“Alright, quick briefing before we head out. Those are the vaults there, transmat storage for gear and things there. Your Ghost can activate it for you. There’s nothing there though hon-” She began, cut off by a spike of annoyance and a furrowing of his brow plates. “Not unless you already deposited some twigs from the wilds.”

“Could I drop one of my five weapons in there then? Just for safekeeping. Not because I don’t need it. Of course.” Ah yes, he could manage sarcasm just as well as she.

“Five?” She asked incredulously, a bit of humor playing up the pitch of her vocals. She could see a rifle and a hand cannon. But with a calm, and slightly satisfied air, Kamon unslung the rifle and laid it across a generator next to the vault. He took the hand cannon from his belt and laid it beside it. He reached behind him, under his cloak, and emerged with another hand cannon in one hand and a machete in the other. He set them down, to her certainly visible surprise. She looked pointedly at the four weapons nodding subtly at each before looking up again, eyelids low and disbelieving. “Again, five?”

He put one foot up on the crate and drew a knife from his boot.

“Ah.” She said. “Five. You are a Hunter at heart.”

“So I’ve been told.”

A Hunter, certainly, and a Gunslinger too. She could feel it. It was the slow burn of the Light, constant if not consistent.

“Six.” She said. “You’ve got six, you just don’t know it yet.”

Strangely enough, he didn’t bite at that. She expected him to ask what she meant, glare a little, show some sort of emotion but he just paused, and took it with a shrug. Maybe he already knew about the Golden Gun. Some Guardians were well attuned to their abilities from the start.

She picked up the rifle, gave it a once over. “Honestly though, and don’t take this the wrong way, these guns are shit.”

He whirred. “Is there a right way to take that?”

“Maybe? Look, to be blunt they’re old, in poor condition, though I suppose you could call it good condition for their age. They’ve done their time, you’re best off getting a new one from the gunsmith and scrapping these for parts.”

Kamon said “Hm.” and didn’t look convinced.

“Come on, Banshees over here. All new Guardians get a free gun.”

“And the other ones cost something?”

“Glimmer. Your Ghost gets it from dismantling gear. It can also extract it from Fallen armor for some reason. It’s strange though, didn’t think they made their stuff with glimmer. That was Golden Age tech.”

“Glad to see it’s still useful.” Kamon set to work re-equipping his armaments, pausing to look at the rusted machete.

“You can pick up a proper hunter’s knife too.” She suggested. “I hear they’re supposed to have ideal balance for throwing and stabbing.”

“Sounds too good to be true.” His lights blipped hopefully but incredulously.

She shrugged and gave him a winning smile “Worth a try. Gonna scrap those guns then?”

“If I like the new one.”

It was a start, she figured.

* * *

He was giving the new auto rifle a fair try.

He was still skeptical, Delah could feel it. It was oddly endearing in a way, he was so attached to an old rifle that would probably get him killed.

It was likely to assume, at some point, it had saved his life. However unlikely the conclusion seemed.

But regardless of the weapon, it was becoming evident she wasn’t going to need to teach Kamon much. He was brutally efficient, and knew how to handle his lethality. For the best, she supposed. She had no clue how Hunters worked, and she was hesitant to break her taunting facade and ask Cayde for legitimate assistance.

He finished clearing another band of Vandals, hiding among the rusted ships. She pretended not to watch him as he swapped clips with blinding efficiency and tilted the gun closer to him to inspect how the barrel was holding under heavy use.

“Are you going to kill anything too?” He asked, and even though it was a quiet, bored tone, it startled her a little. He couldn’t actually have known she was watching him. She knew that sense of knowing was something that only came with the help of her Light, her Warlock’s perception.

“Nah.” She huffed. “ ‘S my day off now thanks to you. Never had a chirpa to do the petty things for me before.”

He tilted his head up to her vantage point on the ridge, where the highway fell into the shoreline. “You call fighting a half dozen vandals petty?” Incredulous. Oh the poor sweet summer child.

“A walk on easy street.” She replied, holding out a palm to signal G. The Ghost appeared and swiveled its anterior sections, little eye darting over the landscape before separating and beginning an area scan.

She could hear Kamon’s annoyed whirr through the comms. “You’re kidding me.”

“My my, you poor dear, you’re in for a terrible surprise if you think this is hard.”

She saw him roll his eyes, literally saw him even from up here. He rolled his whole head with them, just to make a point, before whirling away, cape fluttering behind him. The cape was cool, she conceded to herself, impractical, but cool.

“Contact.” G froze, scan only at eighty-seven percent. “I have to finish, mind the sky.”

“Mind what?” But a darkness was already falling, the mass of the Ketch casting a shadow even before it emerged from jumpspace.

“Fallen contact, big one.” She could see it now, the wide russet hull with a speartip prow.

Delah’s Light shuddered.

“Kamon, back here, now!” She snapped, closing her fist around G. Scan at ninety-eight, ninety-nine… his weight vanished from her hand and she was moving, heading to the right where roadblocks and a small building of unknown purpose provided some cover. God she was glad she had her sniper rifle, and had possessed the sense to buy him a decent one from Banshee.

To his credit he didn’t say a word. He sprinted across the shoreline and up the hill to where she had holed up before the skiffs had landed.

“What’s this?” He asked, training the auto rifle, useless at this range, across the rusted shipyard. “And are you alright?”

“Fallen Ketch. Brings dropships full of bad guys. And sometimes…” She stared at the landing zone, watched the ether extractor transmat into place. Held a twitchy finger as the first forces dropped from the skiff.

“Baron.” G confirmed her fears. “Banners match house Kings.” He was jumpy too. They’d never handled high ranking enemies well.

“Hey.” Kamon said. “I asked you a question. _Are you alright?_ ”

“I’m… what?” She faltered, confused. _Run run run._

“Something feels weird. You feel weird. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, yeah I’m okay.” She was lying. Her Light must be bleeding off emotion, fear. He was a Gunslinger, she was stupid. Solars were especially acute to light wavelengths, even the Hunter types.

She summoned her sniper, linked the sight to her helmet and aimed without even thinking.

 _We’re not staying to fight!_ Her mind screamed, but she was. She was going to stay. Kamon was silently and steadily checking over his own rifle beside her. He’d have her back. She’d never had someone beside her before. Maybe this time it would be different.

Maybe this time she wouldn’t die without light. Maybe this time her Ghost wouldn’t have to hide and watch as they tore into her corpse looking for him.

“Maybe we should go.” She said aloud, remembering. “These are dangerous.” I can’t beat them, I can never beat them. She didn’t say.

“Snipe well and he won’t even reach us.” Kamon said, all quiet certainty. Either he was always like this or his current beginner’s kill death ratio of thirty six was getting to his head. Regardless, it was a solid rock on the warped fabric of the universe. She felt her essence gravitating to him.

“Right.” She said. “Right. Let’s get him then. Head on a platter for the vanguard?”

“Or just for you.” He said, and pulled the trigger.


End file.
